Is it wise to be grateful?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - At all ages, wisdom and a sense
of gratitude appear to go hand in hand, especially for women,
according to a recent study.

Among the participants, people who were considered wise by
others also spontaneously expressed feelings of gratitude more
frequently than others, Austrian researchers report.

"Wisdom is quite strongly related to gratitude," study
author Judith Glück, of Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt,
wrote in an email to Reuters Health. "Wiser individuals are more
grateful than others, and they are grateful for different things
than others," she said.

Although considerable research has explored the nature of
wisdom and of gratitude, there is little examining the
connection between the two, Glück and her co-investigator
Susanne König write in the Journals of Gerontology, Series B:
Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences.

To investigate the relationship, the psychologists devised
two small studies.

For the first study, they used newspaper and radio ads to
solicit names of people considered to be wise. Of those
nominated, 47 men and women, aged 60 years on average, agreed to
participate. For comparison the study also included a random
sample of 47 more adults who were similar in age and education.

All the participants were subsequently interviewed about
their most difficult and best life events, as well as their most
important life lessons.

Overall, 29 participants (31 percent) expressed gratitude to
God, to other people or for the experience itself when they were
interviewed about their most difficult life events, such as the
death of a loved one, illness, divorce or war experiences.

Twenty participants (21 percent) expressed feelings of
gratitude when asked about their best life events.

Such sentiments of gratitude were more frequently expressed
by the people who had been nominated as wise, the researchers
note.

Forty-seven percent of wise nominees versus 15 percent of
the comparison group expressed gratitude, particularly relating
to their current feelings about difficult times in their lives.

Similarly, 38 percent of the wise adults mentioned gratitude
when describing their best life events, versus 4 percent of the
comparison group.

A 76-year-old man nominated as wise, for example, was
grateful for "a new life" after surviving a heart attack.
"Because of this new life, I have new lessons to learn, and I
have started to see life in a different way," he said.

Another wise nominee, an 81-year-old woman, expressed
gratitude as she reflected on her best life events, saying, "I
can only thank God, that my life went as it did."

Likewise, a 38-year-old man, also considered wise, was
grateful for the experience of being dumped by his girlfriend.
"I am very grateful that she ditched me back then, because
otherwise my private life would have gone in a completely
different direction."

This gratitude among wise individuals, even for negative
experiences "suggests that they integrate difficult experiences
into their life story as something through which they had
grown," Glueck said.

"In terms of quality of life, the findings probably imply
that living a good life involves an awareness of the good things
in one's life, the resources and strengths that one has
developed," she added.

In general, all the participants in the first study were
most grateful for their family of origin, including their
parents and siblings, their own children, their health,
occupation, wealth and for other people, such as friends and
colleagues.

Mark Baker, executive director of La Vie Counseling Centers
in Pasadena, California, said his experience in psychotherapy
has taught him "that those people who are able to be grateful
during difficult circumstances learn more in their lives."

"We learn much more from our failures than our successes,"
he told Reuters Health in an email. "This produces greater
wisdom," said Baker, a clinical psychologist and author of
"Jesus, the greatest therapist who ever lived."

In the second study, the researchers investigated whether
the first study's findings would hold among university students
whose wisdom and gratitude were assessed via standardized
psychological tests, rather than by nominations or interviews.

Despite the different methods and study group, wisdom was
again linked to higher levels of gratitude, Glück and König
report. Among the 443 students in the study, those who scored
highest in wisdom also scored higher on measurements of their
sense and frequency of gratitude.

These young adults, aged 28 years on average, were also most
grateful for their family of origin as well as for other people
and for health.

In both studies, women scored higher in gratitude than men
and also expressed gratitude spontaneously during interviews
more often than men - findings that Baker thinks may indicate a
gender bias in the research.

When asked what they were thankful for, however, women and
men had similar responses, the study authors note. This suggests
"men and women might differ less in their experienced gratitude
than in their readiness to spontaneously talk about gratitude,"
they write.

Glück and König conclude in their report, "Cultivating the
experience and expression of gratitude may be conducive to
dealing with the demands of life in a wise way, and in this
sense, to living a good life."

Source: http://bit.ly/1dCAGDV Journals of Gerontology,
Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, online
December 10, 2013.